Observing Gamification

I recently was invited to an Advanced Health Classroom to observe a gamified lesson in action developed by teacher, Aaron Murray. While I will not go full detail into what gamification is – I wanted to take some time and reflect on what I saw.

1. Tasks were chunked and divided into beginner, intermediate, and advanced type challenges. Students had to participate in all challenges. As the student progressed, the challenges would become more difficult and would require more applied learning, decision making, and creativity. In this lesson, I noticed every Blooms Taxonomy level was represented. At first, students would INDEPENDENTLY Define, List, Search for info on key vocab terms, related health, on their iPads. I seen students demonstrating exercises and stretches that could prove beneficial to their health. I heard student give their opinions on what exercise is better than the other…and why. The final challenge include the creation of a self reflective health video. (Hope I can get a sample to share!) Students could determine how far they wanted to take the challenge and could decide to select an advanced challenge vs. a beginner challenge. However, the greater the challenge, the more experience points (XP) they would receive.

2. XP was collected and accumulated into levels. This unit had 10 levels and students would receive certain incentives once they accomplished a level. (Very clever – lowest level was a “limp noodle” and the reward was encouragement – while the mastery level was “Super Saiyan” and the reward was leaving class a minute early on Mondays and Fridays.)

2. Once students believed they completed a challenge, they would verify with their teacher. The teacher would provide them with a badge based on their completion of that challenge or would provide them feedback on what they had to do to better complete the challenge. This is KEY. The teacher was able to have many many opportunities to provide personalized feedback to all of his students.

3. There was was numerous opportunities for STUDENT choice and voice. While each student had to go through every challenge, they had the opportunity to select how deep into the challenge they would go. They received personalized feedback from their instructor on how well they did. There was quite a bit of energy in this classroom and I did not see students off task. Some students working independently – others collaborating.